EXCLUSIVE: Big Sam is 100 not out... and we reveal how life at West Ham is a numbers game under Allardyce

'If there's one thing Sam likes doing, it's winning games'. Meet David Woodfine, West Ham's head of performance analysis. He's the man whose work is arguably the most scrutinised at the club. His boss is Sam Allardyce, a pioneering manager who has based his style on statistics and an obsession with numbers.

Fittingly, Allardyce brings up his 100th game in charge of the Hammers in the Capital One Cup on Tuesday night against Cardiff City.

He was, of course, one of the first Premier League managers to implement the use of Prozone over 13 years ago at Bolton when the technology was in its infancy. It's now the leading technical analysis tool that calculates almost every aspect of a player's performance.

Number cruncher: West Ham boss Sam Allardyce celebrates his 100th game in charge of the club on Tuesday

From fitness to touches of the ball, everything is tracked and meticulously monitored. Woodfine – or 'Woody' as he is affectionately known at the club – is the heartbeat of West Ham's analysis department.

He has worked closely alongside Allardyce since the former Blackburn Rovers boss took over at the Boleyn Ground two years ago.

'Fortunately, I had a manager come in, in Sam, who understands the value of analysis,' says Woodfine, speaking to me at the club's Chadwell Heath training ground.

Before he was one of the first to implement them in his stats-centred methodology at Bolton, Allardyce first discovered the advantages of statistics as a player, when he spent a year in the United States playing for the Tampa Bay Rowdies in 1983.

Key figure: David 'Woody' Woodfine delivers a presentation to the squad every Monday morning

They shared training facilities with the NFL's Buccaneers and it proved to be an enlightening experience for the then-29-year-old Allardyce. His passion for those 'game changing' numbers has remained and he is constantly seeking new knowledge to improve his West Ham team. And Woodfine must find it.

'Sometimes I wish he'd give me a break!' he joked. Yet, his role is certainly a demanding one. From player performance to recruitment, his team hold all the key information that Allardyce craves.

'We make our reviews after every individual game but then we trend our performance throughout the season,' Woodfine explains. 'Sam sets targets and we break the season into five phases. They are eight-game phases for the first four and then six games at the end.

'At the start of each phase, he sets a points total, how many clean sheets he expects us to get, taking into account the difficulty of the fixtures and how many home and away games there are, and then at the end of each phase we look at it again.'

Hammer time: Ravel Morrison celebrates with his West Ham team-mates after scoring against Everton as illustrated by our pitch map (below)

Every player gets his own specific brief from the analysis team. On a typical Premier League matchday week, the team return to the training ground on a Monday, where they attend a 15-minute post-match presentation reviewing Saturday's game. They are handed their individual dossiers that break down their performance.

'The minute it goes up on the board there is no hiding place,' says Woodfine. 'We'll do the group meeting and Sam always details what we've done well and what we can improve on.

'The players go off and train and then the individual stuff comes after that. Macca will pull people in individually or as a unit and impart coaching points which we'll have video and stats to back up.'

There is one stat in particular that Allardyce has a preference for detail: knockdowns. Knockdowns, be it in attack or in defence, are important in terms of how effective the team can be in scoring or denying the opposition.

Expert analysis: Each West Ham player gets his own specific brief

'We've got benchmarks and one that we do look at is knockdowns,' adds Woodfine. 'Every time we play the ball forward to the front, we're looking at whether we win the flick-on, we win the ball that gets headed down (the second ball) because it's a great opportunity to gain possession in the opposition's half so we're constantly looking at how well we do that.

'So if we're doing better than the opposition, Sam is happy. And that's something that he places some emphasis on. There are obviously different stats that we put more value on than others.'

You can read the full interview in the
official West Ham United programme, available to buy here, or it can be downloaded here

Most of the stats are reviewed
during and immediately after every game too. Woodfine and his team are
in constant communication with Allardyce and his bench throughout the 90
minutes, where they are asked to record events and package them into
useful clips to display at half-time in the dressing room.

Woodfine
is excited about the future with West Ham. Although he highlights the
importance of staying in the Premier League, he can’t help but look
forward to the club’s move to the Olympic Stadium, for which he has had
an input for the planning of the new dressing room layout.‘It’s brilliant working with Sam because it’s a constant challenge,’ he says.

‘He keeps you on your toes because he is constantly questioning and looking at the numbers and video analysis.

‘If
there’s a message that comes across from the first 100 games that I’ve
taken on board, it’s whether we win, lose or draw, Sam’s done everything
he can in his preparation.

‘You
can’t offer the players any excuses. As staff we try to make it as good
as it possibly can be so that they’ve got every little detail for when
they go out there on the pitch.’